


Loving You is Trench Warfare

by AlchemyAlice



Series: My name is Charles Xavier. I used to be a spy... [2]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Burn Notice AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 07:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7425709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlchemyAlice/pseuds/AlchemyAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about Charles’s life is that it follows a little too closely the theory of butterfly wings and hurricanes.</p><p>Unbeknownst to Charles, or Erik, or really anyone else except a few anonymous paper-pushers in MI-5, at a certain point in Charles’s colorful career in covert ops, he was unlucky enough to get noticed. Particularly, noticed for being both useful, and moral.</p><p>The latter was considered, at least by his handlers, to be Charles’s one great flaw.</p><p>And unbeknownst to almost everyone, that was where it all started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loving You is Trench Warfare

**Author's Note:**

> About five years ago, I wrote 6k of this, and then realized that it had no plot, and no ending. I tried multiple times to finish it; no dice.
> 
> Last week, I kind of cocked my head at it in passing and went "fuck it, least I can give it an ending of SOME KIND"
> 
> So it might make zero sense, and the writing style probably changed a lot halfway through. BUT IT'S DONE, SO WHATEVER. This should probably count as amnesty of some kind. BLERGH.
> 
> It also directly follows Duct Tape Makes You Smart, no time skip at all, in contrast to the actual timing of finishing this.

The thing about Charles’s life is that it follows a little too closely the theory of butterfly wings and hurricanes.

Unbeknownst to Charles, or Erik, or really anyone else except a few anonymous paper-pushers in MI-5, at a certain point in Charles’s colorful career in covert ops, he was unlucky enough to get noticed. Particularly, noticed for being both useful, and _moral_.

The latter was considered, at least by his handlers, to be Charles’s one great flaw.

And unbeknownst to almost everyone, that was where it all started.

But that’s a whole other story. Butterflies may be pretty, but they are also small and ephemeral; the hurricanes are the far more interesting bit.

***

When the rest of what Charles has (to his mild horror) come to consider his crew finds out he’s still alive and well, he is mobbed at his apartment and then kidnapped back to Westchester, where Raven hugs him like she wants to squeeze the air out of him.

“Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again, Charles Francis Xavier,” she hisses into his ear.

“You know I can’t—”

“Do you know how much of a wreck Erik was?” she talks right over him, “Dealing with that was worse than taking care of Cain with a head cold, and Cain used to sneeze on me. _On purpose._ So just don’t, don’t do that again. We don’t have the crockery to spare.”

Charles tries to picture Erik being a snotty crier, and can’t believe it for a second. The broken crockery part is the only thing that sounds even remotely realistic, and even that’s a stretch.

He promises anyway, even though he knows it’s probably going to happen again, and again. He’s got Emma Frost riding his ass now, so if anything, it will probably just get worse.

He can’t quite bring himself to tell the others that news yet, though.

Instead, he lets Hank and Alex raid the wine cellar, and they take the evening off in style. And if Erik seems to have a tendency towards leaning in close to talk to him, while possessively twining his fingers in the collar of Charles’s oxford, Charles is definitely not going to complain.

Raven just watches them and laughs.

***

(Emma Frost has been in almost every country in the world. New York is pedestrian at this point.

She can appreciate, however, the particular challenges it presents this time around.

Her newly-acquired penthouse opens out onto a rooftop patio, where she takes her double espresso and lays out the assortment of dossiers, including one neatly labeled in Courier font, ‘Charles Francis Xavier, aka Professor X’.

This is not the dossier doctored by Shaw. It makes far better reading, Emma thinks, than anything that hack could have conceived in his shortsighted little mind.

She flips it open as she bites neatly into a croissant.)

***

The team (because, as much as Charles is loath to admit it, a _team_ is what they have become) is mired in what looks like an ordinary protection case when Emma shows up in Charles’s apartment unannounced.

“You don’t want to deal with Renault,” she says, as he comes in the door.

“Miss Frost, what an unexpected pleasure,” Charles says, and makes a show of closing the door while also making sure that none of his emergency firearms are missing and/or incapacitated. It seems that they aren’t, but that’s hardly an indication that this is a friendly visit.

She walks around the loft with an air of detached amusement. “Indeed. I’m just giving you a heads up.”

Charles stays very still. “How…kind?” he says at last.

“I want something in exchange, of course.”

“Of course,” Charles sighs.

Emma drops a dossier on the coffee table. “This is the file on Renault. It’s why you don’t want to deal with him.” She drops a second one on top of that. “This is your job. There’s been increasing evidence of human trafficking coming into New York, and we think that a certain Markus Karlev has something to do with it.”

It takes a great deal of effort not to allow the disgust Charles is feeling to show on his face. “Karlev? I could have sworn he was dead.”

Emma smiles slightly. “Reports say you’re mistaken. Aren’t you glad you work for me now, so I can bring your attention to these things?”

She walks past him towards the door and pats his shoulder, fingers lingering on his lapel. “Have fun. Say hi to the kids for me. By the way, did you know you’re living next door to a drug dealer? That might be inconvenient in the future. Just an observation. Ta, darling.”

The door shuts behind her with a distinctly smug click.

Charles grits his teeth, and promptly changes jackets. He going to need that particular one cleaned.

***

“Wait, _who_ gave this to you?”

“Emma Frost.” At Alex’s blank look, Charles pauses. “When were you in Iraq?” he asks.

“‘05 to ‘07. Why?”

Charles thinks back to the file he’d slowly begun to build ever since he came back from being black-bagged. “Does ‘Emilia Grasmere’ ring a bell?”

Alex blanches. “Holy shit.”

“I don’t know all of her aliases; in fact, it’s likely that I only know a small fraction of them,” Charles says, pacing around the loft. Erik is standing on the far side of the room, and Hank and Alex are shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen counter. “But I can tell you that from what little I know of her, she’s made quite an impact in the counterintelligence community.”

“Would I know her?” Erik asks, a quiet rumble from the corner.

“I don’t know,” Charles stops in front of him and hands him a surveillance photo. “You tell me.”

Erik takes the photo and goes rigid. “You’re joking.”

Alex swings around. “You’ve met her? I only heard her name in passing around the higher ups in ‘Stan. She sounded like trouble.”

“She is trouble,” Erik says. He glares at Charles. “Charles, exactly how high up the food chain did you manage to piss someone off?”

“I haven’t done anything!” Charles protests. “Why do you think I’m so eager to find out who issued the burn notice and why?”

Hank sighs. “What did she want in return for the suspiciously thorough file on Renault?”

Charles glances at Hank, and then looks back at Erik, meeting his eyes. “Karlev.”

Erik inhales through his teeth in a hiss that’s on the verge of a snarl. “He’s still alive?”

“Despite our best efforts, it seems,” Charles replies. He shoves the Karlev dossier over to Hank, who begins to flip through it, Alex looking over his shoulder.

“What’s he doing nowadays?” Erik asks, eyes still narrowed.

Hank scans the file. “Trafficking, of all kinds. Most recently, illegal immigrants, possibly sex trade. Yeesh. This is a big job, Charles—Karlev has a hell of a lot of connections.”

“I know.”

“Five man job at least,” Alex agrees. “Especially if we’re gonna keep going after Renault, which I assume we are.”

“Oh, we are,” Hank says darkly. He had been the one to get Charles involved with Renault’s protection racket. Or rather, his young neighbour had—a neighbour who sported a broken collarbone and wrist, courtesy of Renault’s goons.

Alex squeezes the back of Hank’s neck, a strangely fierce gesture that would look aggressive if it didn’t immediately result in the softening of Hank’s shoulders.

“We are,” Charles agrees. “It’s certainly more of a job than we were expecting, and it will only be compounded by Miss Frost’s project, but we won’t stop.”

Erik smiles grimly. “So. Five man job, yes?”

They all look at each other, and then at Charles. Charles winces, and then sighs. “I’ll call her.”

***

There is very little either Erik or Charles will say about Markus Karlev, if pressed. They will admit that, in a world in which they’d both ostensibly been bad guys, Karlev had been far worse. Moreover, he’s the one that has apparently gotten away.

They would not mention that when it comes down to it, Erik will have to get in line behind Charles to put a knife in Karlev’s jugular.

***

“You. Need help.”

“…Yes?”

“And you’re asking me?”

“We need a fifth person for the play we’re making. We’re a bit swamped with work at the moment.”

“And so you called me!” Raven squeals. “This is going to be so much fun, Charles!”

“It’s dangerous,” Charles warns. “I need you to treat this seriously.”

“Of course, you know I will!” He can hear her eye roll over the line. “But I like your friends; I’m glad you have them and it’ll be nice to see them.”

“Yes, well, you’ll certainly be seeing them. Just…it’s delicate work, and I know you’re more than capable of it, but you’re also a civilian, so I need for you to promise me to do what I tell you.”

“Bossy, bossy.”

“I want you _safe_.”

“Charles,” Raven says gently. “We’re not kids anymore. I know you have a dangerous job, and I want to help.”

He exhales. “Okay. Well, we’ll come up to Westchester to plan, then. Better that than having our supplies in the city where they might be found.”

“It’s your house.”

“No,” he says, smiling crookedly against the phone. “It’s most definitely yours.”

***

As it turns out, Raven has an uncanny ability with disguises.

Erik raises an eyebrow at her as she twirls, hands in the pockets of her blazer. Her hair is dyed chestnut brown and pulled back into a severe bun at her nape, and there are subtle latex builds on the ridge of her nose that make her just different enough to be utterly unrecognisable. One would have to study her up close for several minutes to spot that there was anything artificial about her appearance, and even then it could probably be mistaken for bad plastic surgery.

“Excellent,” Erik says, after a long moment. “Very impressive indeed.”

Raven flushes slightly. “I did a lot of theatre makeup in college. This wasn’t too hard.”

“How much acting did you do?”

“She got by,” Charles says drily. He hands her a pack of IDs and other paraphernalia. “You’re Rachel Englewood. You’re a minor messenger for the Franck family. You simply offer terms, and state that if those terms are not met, there will be consequences.”

“What are my terms?” Raven asks, raising an eyebrow.

Erik leans forward and whispers in her ear. Her face slowly stretches into a grin.

Then all of a sudden she’s turning to Charles and she is as severe as her hairstyle, her gaze cold and indifferent. “I understand you think this territory belongs to you,” she says to Charles, in a careful and slightly condescending clipped tone. “Unfortunately, my employer has other plans.”

Alex shuffles uncomfortably in the background. Hank coughs.

“Yes,” Charles says, after he can talk without choking again. “I think that will do nicely, Raven.”

She beams.

***

Raven does her part frighteningly well, and all of a sudden Renault is scrambling for security.

Erik dons a funereal black suit, and grins.

Three weeks later, and one wing of Renault’s business is crumbling around his ears, and Charles is very carefully packaging up the salvage that Erik has hacked apart into artful pieces of evidence, which the FBI will no doubt spend many happy months pouring over.

 _Not so hard,_ he finds himself thinking.

***

Before they get a chance to start tackling Emma Frost’s project though, Charles inevitably gets sidetracked. This time it’s Marlene, a secretary from Long Island who didn’t know what she was getting into when she saw a guy get double-tapped in the alley behind her workplace. It wouldn’t have been a problem—Charles would have just sent her along to get police protection—if she hadn’t been seen banging desperately on his door in the middle of the afternoon by one of the double-tappers’ buddies.

Apparently Charles has gained himself a bit of a reputation around town, and suddenly things get very complicated indeed.

It escalates until Charles ends up dragging Marlene out the door of her house while Erik gleefully raids her liquor cabinet for the makings of molotov cocktails.

Charles manages to shove Marlene in the car just as he hears Erik yell out the second floor window, “ _GOOD AFTERNOON, GENTLEMEN!_ ” and then things start exploding and being on fire.

“Bugger bugger bugger bugger,” he mutters as he dives into the car after Marlene and hotwires it.

“Is he always like that?” Marlene asks.

“I’m afraid so,” Charles says, and guns the car. He rather hates how fond he sounds.

***

Things calm down after that. Charles devotes the library in Westchester to planning, including a series of cons to draw Karlev in, blueprints for all of the bases of operation they’ll need and secure areas they’ll need to invade, and so far, it looks solid. Risky due to the nature of the work, but solid nonetheless.

Charles does enjoy the bookish elements of the spy game, which Erik takes pleasure in pointing out at every occasion.

Hank manufactures new IDs and supplies custom built for the job. Alex carries out recon. The trap unfurls smoothly and quietly in key places throughout Manhattan.

So inevitably, they make a mistake.

Two weeks in, on a hot damp night in the peak of August, Erik and Charles find themselves completely, off-their-faces drunk.

They should probably not be drunk. But dammit, the evening had been a bust, nothing else could be done until morning, and any moralistic debate between Charles and Erik automatically ends in either drinking or shooting, and both of them have enough scars and hospital stays to prefer the former. So yeah, they’re fucking drunk.

It’s highly enjoyable, really, now that they’re not arguing anymore.

“Do you remember the deal with that punk Armenian gangster—”

“The one who wanted to bring his Lambourghini to the _desert_?”

“I’m pretty sure _you_ wanted to kill him Charles!”

“It was awfully tempting, what with his predilection for having covert meetings on fucking _rooftops_ —”

“One carefully aimed Dragunov and we’d never have to hear him talk about his Arabian horses again,” Erik finishes. “Those were the days, Charles.”

“For you, maybe,” Charles replies.

“You loved it,” Erik says dismissively, and Charles is just sober enough to prevent himself from clarifying what exactly he had actually loved about that time, because he and Erik are on far friendlier terms now, but Charles has had his heart broken once, and he’s not keen to have it done again any time soon. They haven’t talked about Erik’s violent reaction to Charles’ not-death, and it’s likely that they never will.

Charles tries very hard not to let this bother him. He hums instead, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and stumbles forward, bringing Erik with him down the street.

He barely recognises his own ringtone when it goes off. He steers Erik into an alley, propping both their shoulders against the brick. Erik tips his head back when he finally gets his own feet under him, grinning, and Charles (out of pure necessity, mind you) settles against Erik’s chest while he fumbles his phone open.

“Hello,” Charles answers at last, a little too loudly.

“Charles? Are you okay?”

“Hank! I’m fine, what can I do for you this evening?”

“This call is not for my benefit,” Hank says tightly, “It seems that Renault has called in those tenuous mob connections Frost hinted at.”

Charles sobers up very fast indeed. “Oh.”

Erik’s gaze focuses and he looks back down to watch Charles’s expression.

“Are you safe?” Charles demands. “Is Alex?”

“Fuck, they don’t even know who I am,” Hank dismisses him, “But if I were you, I’d lock down immediately. They’ll go to you to get those contracts we relieved them of.”

“Got it.” Charles snaps the phone shut. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask another favour.”

Erik’s eyebrows twitch. “Do I get to shoot people?”

Charles sometimes forgets just how gleefully good Erik is at his job, but then things like this and molotov cocktails happen, and he remembers very vividly indeed. It probably should bother him more than it does. “Probably,” he affirms. “Family matters suit you?”

“Always.”

***

In the end, it’s only an even fight because they’re wasted. But that doesn’t change the fact that Erik’s arm is dislocated and Charles is pretty certain that he’s blacked out at least twice on their way back to his apartment.

“Charles. Charles!”

The slap that follows stings like a bitch. Charles twitches, but the light beyond his eyelids already hurts, so he’s keeping them shut tight for as long as humanly possible.

Make that three times.

“Damn it, Charles, wake up, you can’t leave me like this, I won’t let you goddamnit—”

“Erik?” he murmurs, though it hurts pretty badly to breathe.

“Oh thank god,” Raven says in the background. They must be near the apartment. Goody.

“He should probably go to a hospital—”

“Don’t be stupid, Alex, that’s the first place they’d look,” Hank says.

“Can you walk?” Erik asks.

Charles isn’t really sure that he can. No matter how well trained one is, getting beaned on the head with a two-by-four and then grazed in multiple places will always be severely disadvantageous to one’s overall combat readiness.

He twitches his legs experimentally, and croaks, “I think you’ll need to do a lot of the work for me.”

“Raven, take his other side,” Erik says, and he’s gone quiet and unhappy now, and Charles wants to reassure him but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have the strength for it. He feels Raven pull his arm over her shoulders and does his best to facilitate their lifting from the ground.

“I’ve got the car in the lot,” Alex says, “We need to get out of here. They might know this address by now.”

Charles can’t tell whether his legs are moving alongside Erik and Raven’s. “Won’t be in a bit,” he mumbles aloud.

He gets a glimpse of Erik’s concerned face before black slips in and takes over again.

***

It may be a hallucination brought on by his concussed state, but Charles swears Emma Frost is in his apartment once, while he recuperates. He had a distinct memory of her bell-clear, entitled voice.

“Oh honey, this is not how I envisioned our first check in. Get me Karlev, and maybe I won’t take disciplinary action.”

It was probably a dream.

Probably.

On the bright side, though, the protection racket finally goes away after that. Erik and Charles might have been badly off, but the men they’d left behind had been far worse.

Hank’s neighbour is profusely thankful.

Charles adds the Austrian mob (which, who knew?) to his mental list of people who, should he ever encounter them again, he will need to run very fast in the opposite direction from.

Karlev hangs over their heads now, doubly serious without the distractions of more altruistic jobs. Charles tracks down his various staff members, and outlines a plan.

Oh, this should be fun.

***

(Emma Frost, it should be said, is not simply good at her job.

She is the _best_ at her job. And not only was this position hard won, but also it came with a shitload of collateral damage.

Follow the casualties back far enough, and Shaw probably counts as part and parcel to it. Emma made waves when she took her place at the top of the ladder, and the ripples cover his corpse at the bottom of the Hudson.

Charles doesn’t know that, though. Most people don’t.)

***

It all blows up the second Alex volunteers to go in as a prospective buyer for a collection of forged Mondrians. None of them see it coming, they welcome his enthusiasm into the fold, and then two days later he’s disappearing, kicking and shouting, into an unmarked van with someone that looks a hell of a lot like Karlev’s right hand man from way back.

Hank turns on Charles with a muted, pale-faced rage that Charles has only seen on him once before. “Did you know this was going to happen?” he asks evenly.

Charles can’t even speak, just shakes his head. He hadn’t even thought Karlev was going to be involved in this job.

Shit. _Shit_.

“We’ll get him back,” Erik promises, “And if they’ve touched him, we’ll kill them.”

For once, Hank looks like he’s on Erik’s side more than he is on Charles’s.

***

The plan starts out simple. It becomes more and more complicated as they trace the forgeries back to money laundering, money laundering to guns, and as Emma expected, guns to people.

Karlev sits at the centre of the mass of dossiers, surveillance photos and wiretaps that cover the entirety of Charles’s study in Westchester, his cruelty writ in offshore accounts and blood diamonds. It would be impressive if it didn’t also make Charles sick.

“Emma knew this is what we’d find,” he says numbly, standing amidst it all. Erik comes up behind him, flattening a palm against his shoulder. “She had so much on him in the Middle East, in Asia, but she projected that we’d find all of that here too. In _fucking_ New York.”

“She wanted the best to take him down,” Erik comments. “And that’s what she’ll get.”

“I’m not in top form,” Charles admits, “We’re going to need help.”

Erik looks at him steadily. “I’ll see what I can find.”

***

Moira asks for her favour at the least convenient time, which at this point, is just Charles’ luck.

“Moira, you know that at this point I’d do absolutely everything I can to help you,” he says. “But I can’t do this now.”

“Charles,” Moira growls. “You promised me. You promised me a job.”

“I know I did. And I’ll do it. But not immediately. What I’m doing right now is too important, one of my team is on the line. I can’t stop what I’m doing now. I’m sorry.”

“…Fine.”

She hangs up, and Charles wonders numbly if he’s lost yet another ally, yet another bastion of potential favours. He doesn’t know which possibility distresses him more, which makes it much worse.

There’s a knock on the door as Charles puts the phone down, and he goes to answer it.

It’s Erik, and a tall young man whom Charles doesn’t recognise, with dark skin and intelligent eyes. Charles raises his eyebrows.

“I found us help,” Erik says simply.

“Hi,” the man says, nodding curtly to Charles. He has the bearing of retired military. “Lehnsherr here says that you helped him kill Sebastian Shaw.”

“I did,” Charles agrees, his own interest rising.

“Then I owe you a favour or two by proxy. Name’s Armando Muñoz, but you can call me Darwin.”

“He survived Shaw,” Erik supplies, “And three tours in Recon. He’s currently looking for employment but would prefer avoiding mercenary work. I said we might have a place for him.”

“Took me a few years to get myself back together,” Darwin shrugs, “But that’s the long and short of it.”

Charles stands back. “Please come in. Darwin?”

“I’m very adaptable,” Darwin says simply, but Charles has a feeling he means a lot more than that.

Suddenly the task at hand seems just that much more possible. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says to him, and means it.

***

Darwin hits it off with the rest of the group with almost supernatural aplomb, enough that Hank loses some of the tightness around his mouth and starts actually talking about the various leads he’s tracking down on where Alex might have been taken.

“We’re 95% sure it’s Yoldar’s team, they do the majority of the sensitive dirty work for Karlev,” he says, handing a file over the Darwin. “Somehow he managed to figure out we’re onto him through Alex’s dealings with the art dealer.”

Darwin skims the file. “How do you know?” he asks finally.

They all look at him. “Because he’s kidnapped?” Raven offers.

“What if it was something else?” Darwin says, looking up at them. “What if they’ve brought him in because of the art dealer?”

There’s a moment of silence.

“Fuck,” Hank says fervently.

“This changes our game plan considerably,” Erik says darkly.

Charles nods.

“Okay, so maybe they don’t know we’re onto Karlev. That means that we need a plan to get us to Karlev while making it seem like an accident.” Charles puts his hands on the kitchen counter, surveying them all. “I think we can do that.”

***

As it turns out, getting Mickey the drug dealer from next door out of a jamb and then convincing him to sell his wares elsewhere was one of the best long-term investments Charles has ever made. One day, he will tell Emma Frost about it and be extremely smug at her.

“Mickey, I need a favor.”

“Yeah man, what d’you need?”

“Do you do prescription amphetamines?”

“Hell yeah, dog, I got you covered. On the house.” Charles can hear his impish grin down the line. “I don’t know how you did it, man, but business is _booming_ out in this shit.”

Charles sighs internally at the fate of an old schoolmate’s affluent neighbourhood. It wasn’t as if students buying on a dare would really affect their chances at Ivy League, considering how much their parents made.

“Just trying to help,” he says aloud. “How about you meet me in Brooklyn? We’ll work it out from there.”

***

Yoldar does not react well to meth.

But then again, most people don’t.

Erik browbeats him into giving up Alex’s location in the guise of a cheated con man after his share of the take, and then they’re off and running, Raven clinging to Charles as he speeds across town on the Concours, just in time to reach the old warehouse in Hoboken and meet with Hank and Darwin as they break in.

Karlev isn’t there, of course, but they don masks and extract Alex with extreme prejudice.

Alex’s face is a mass of bruises, and he carries himself with a hunch around his sensitive organs when they cut the duct tape off him, but even so the first thing he says is, “I’ve got some stuff on Karlev you need to know.”

Hank puts Alex’s arm across his shoulders and pulls him close to support him, Darwin taking up his other side, and Charles nods. “Let’s head to Westchester, then.”

***

The long and short of it is, Karlev’s in deep with Wall Street, and Wall Street is inevitably in deep with government. There are threads there that Charles sense run deeper than what Alex had been able to glean from his interrogators, but he can only deal with so many things at a time, and Wall Street is more than enough to go on for now.

They’re mostly still fucked, but maybe slightly less fucked than before.

“Bankers?” Erik says in disbelief. “We’re going to start a war with some _bankers_?”

“We’re going to war with Karlev via his bankers,” Charles corrects. “And don’t act so surprised. It’s hardly as if Wall Street’s crookedness is news, nowadays.”

“It’s unprincipled,” Erik says, curling his lip. “Capitalist pigs.”

Charles can’t really disagree. But he presses on with the game plan. “Right,” he says, “So we have at our disposal our crooked art dealer--”

“Who’s currently in police custody,” Hank interjects.

“Five potential locations for Karlev’s base of operations--”

“Which we can’t narrow down any more,” Darwin adds.

“And Yoldar.”

“Fuckin’ Yoldar,” Alex spits. Most of the bruises on his face are due to Yoldar, apparently.

“Kick the hornet’s nest?” Erik suggests.

Charles sighs. “Unfortunately, I think that’s our only option. We’re going to need a forged Turner etching, a police scanner, and some gaffer tape. Also, I’m going to need some more face time with Emma.”

“Have fun with that,” Erik says drily.

***

“Honey, I have been hearing a great many things, and not all of them are good,” Emma says, when Charles calls.

“Broken eggs, omelettes,” Charles sketches, making a useless gesture in the air.

“Mmmhm,” Emma says flatly.

“I don’t think we can get him into the Hague,” Charles says. “But I think we can leave him penniless and running.”

Emma sighs. “Capone’s taxes, is it? All right, what do you need?”

Charles tells her.

***

It starts small, and it’s intricate, just like the spider’s web of Karlev’s dealings.

Darwin turns out to have an excellent head for numbers, and between he and Hank, the setup for siphoning Karlev’s funds gradually forms. They seem to have developed a remarkably friendly rapport, and more often than not, Charles sees them and Alex conferring quietly together, Darwin occasionally touching Alex’s elbow to get his attention, Hank watching the two of them intently, without any visible jealousy. Charles willl be interested to see how that develops.

Meanwhile Erik, for all of his hatred of the excesses of capitalism, makes an excellent stockbroker.

“Comments, Charles?” he asks, straightening his dark purple tie and shrugging his shoulders within the confines of his expertly tailored gray suit. The figure he cuts is...indecent.

“Um,” Charles manages, throat dry.

Erik raises an eyebrow knowingly. “I’m going to need you to be a little more articulate than that, if you’re going to be my dweeby number-cruncher,” he drawls.

“Thankfully, that is a role I was born to occupy,” Charles rallies, shoving his hands into his comparatively ill-fitting trouser pockets. He’s wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a sweater vest for good measure. He hunches down in his tweed and affects a low self-esteem. “Mr. Alfredsson, sir,” he ducks his head, partially to hide his smirk.

“Very good, Travers,” Erik murmurs. “Shall we go and meet our prospective clients?”

“Of course,” Charles acquiesces, and tries not to react with anything but feigned nervousness when Erik claps him on the shoulder, all sneering alpha male. It isn’t very hard.

***

Karlev’s pet banker clearly knows who he’s in bed with, because the chance to make a nearly sure profit has him stammering eagerly for further details and contact numbers. Erik lounges and radiates assurance as Charles shoves records and statistical data from the past twenty years at him, pushing his glasses up his noses periodically and offering all the guarantees he can without being too obvious or too certain.

“This is, I could use this,” the banker says, a little dreamily. “I’ve got a great deal of my own accounts tied up in inconvenient places, and this is so _mobile…_ ”

“That’s why we like it, old chap,” Erik says, his satisfied grin both wide and conspiratorial. “I think we can help each other tremendously.”

“Yes,” the banker says, nodding, “Yes.”

***

They get one financier in bed with them, then three. Then it's Darwin's turn to don a dapper suit.

"We should hit Wall Street all the time," he says, eyeing his well-tailored reflection in the mirror. Hank and Alex are watching him from the corner of the room with open appreciation, of which he’s clearly aware.

"If we do, your costumes are coming out of your own budget next time," Charles grumbles, only half-annoyed.

"Admit it, you'd love to dress us all in crime fighting uniforms to set us loose on Manhattan," Erik elbows him in the ribs.

"I want nothing of the sort," Charles replies, poker-faced.

***

The fourth financier is paydirt. But it comes at a price.

“I’m getting interference on your wire,” Hank says from the van they’re all crammed in, while Darwin makes his pitch in the neighboring restaurant. “I think--oh shit. Darwin, wrap it up, don’t sell him on anything more than the above-board stuff.”

“What is it?” Alex asks.

“Ibsen is wired too, which means we have company,” Charles says. “Hank, can you trace their signal?”

“Working on it,” Hank murmurs, typing fast. “It’s a professional rig, whoever it’s from knows what they’re doing, I…” he makes a dissatisfied noise, and keeps working.

Ten minutes later, Darwin is safely back in the van with them, making a face at the wrinkles he’s putting in his suit. “What the hell happened?” he asks, folding himself into the far corner as Alex throws the van into gear and pulls into traffic.

“That government connection Alex heard murmurings about, back in Yoldar’s place?” Hank says, still typing, a grimace pulling at his mouth. “We’ve got a name.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Darwin says. “One more fly in the web.”

“It is,” Charles says, numb. He looks up at them all, and his throat feels dry. “I think I know why I was burned.”

***

“Stryker.” Erik says, stony-faced, back in Westchester. “Three-star general, William Stryker. Scourge of illegal arms dealers, paragon of American virtue, is not just working with, but _running Markus Karlev_?”

“Got it in one,” Hank says. “We just ran into one of his counterintelligence outfits, which seems aimed directly at Charles, and isn’t the least bit legit. A little more digging, and it all gets a lot clearer. He made a mistake, coming after you so directly after all this time,” he adds to Charles, who just shakes his head. The answers are finally coming hard and fast and he can’t quite wrap his head around them.

“He burned me because I took Karlev out of the picture,” he says blankly. “I did one good thing, one right thing that wasn’t in the mission parameters, and he destroyed me for it.”

“ _We_ took him out. And not well enough, apparently,” Erik corrects.

Charles shakes his head. Of all the things—it hadn’t even been at the end of his tenure undercover with Erik, though it perhaps had been the first time they’d regarded each other with respect rather than distrust. They’d run into Karlev as a matter of course— Karlev supplied all sorts of things, and Erik had needed to offload some very dubious funds at an inconvenient time.

“You haven’t met him yet, have you,” Erik had said, just before the first deal Charles was to be privy to went down. They had been standing on the edge of Jo-burg’s city limits, Erik leaned up against his dusty Range Rover. They’d had two trunks of dirty cash in the back of the car,  ready to be turned over to Karlev in exchange for a collection of clean, unregistered AKs. Charles had been carefully making mental notes of the pattern of money laundering and arms circulation for three weeks by that point, and being a part of this particular deal was going to link a great many disparate threads together in his future report.

“Mr. Karlev? No. I’ve heard a good deal,” Charles had said. The file on Karlev back at the CIA had been thin and inconclusive, but damning by inference. Charles was looking forward to adding a good few pages to it.

“My advice? Don’t say a word more to him than you need to,” Erik had said. He had been uncharacteristically restive all day. “He’s not...I’ve only dealt with him a few times, and I don’t ordinarily like to. He’s not someone to cross.”

“No one in this business is,” Charles had replied, affably enough. “Part of the charm.”

Erik had shot him a look devoid of any humor. “He’s not like the rest of us, Pemberton. I’ve not had any problems with him yet, but he...I had half a mind not to take this deal, to be honest.”

Charles had raised his eyebrows. “This deal is practically perfect for you. We’d be hard-pressed to find better even in less difficult circumstances.”

“Which is why we’re here. But I’ve heard things...well. I try to keep my business ethical.”

Charles remembers suppressing an eyeroll at that. He hadn’t fully understood Erik’s personal code of ethics back then. While he had taken a certain liking to Erik upon first meeting him, he had continued to consider him, a few months later, still a part of the broad category “arms dealer”, of which Karlev was an equal member.  

“Well,” he had shrugged. “When a deal this good comes up, one can’t afford to be overparticular.”

Erik had made a face, but then Karlev’s truck had appeared on the horizon, and they’d shut up.

It had been a much larger truck than they had been expecting. With some equally unexpected, and far more distressing, extra cargo.

Karlev, they would find out, was not averse to consolidating his business trips. And Charles had learned just what Erik had meant when he said that he, as an arms dealer, had ethics. The thought of comparing him and Karlev had suddenly become anathema to Charles.

The deal had gone smoothly, though _how,_ Charles still wasn’t sure.

Afterward, he and Erik had sat silently in the Range Rover for a long, tense moment.

“You’re thinking of doing something stupid,” Erik had said eventually. His voice had sounded rough, like he’d been holding a shout in his throat for a long time.

Charles had had to fight to stay in character, harder than he had ever done before. “Obviously, it’s none of my business,” he had replied, measured and tense.

When he had then cast a glance at Erik though, unsure of what he would see there, he’d been met with an expression he’d not seen on Erik’s face before.

“I’m never taking a deal with him again,” Erik had said. “I can’t.”

Charles had nodded. But he was already thinking ahead, of the ways in which this deal linked together all of these other networks he’d been working to parse, how Karlev stood at the center of the tangled web he’d been tasked to gain information on. He hadn’t orders to dismantle it, not in the least. But, he had reasoned, wouldn’t it be far easier to gain all of this intelligence if he broke it apart, just a bit? Like overturning a stone, or cracking an egg.

And it would be a good thing. For Karlev to stop existing. The world would be better for it.

He had bit his lip. “You’re right,” he had admitted, catching Erik’s gaze and meeting it full-on. “I’m thinking about doing something stupid.”

Erik had looked at him then with the first spark of genuine, keen interest that Charles had ever seen, and which he would come to seek out in the coming weeks, and then years.

“Good,” he’d said. “So am I.”

And yet, all along, it hadn’t been Karlev they should have gone after, but the man pulling his strings.

“Right, well,” Hank continues, as Charles pulls himself back from remembrance. “Apparently, in addition to human trafficking, Karlev was moving intelligence for Stryker. Or rather, he was moving intelligence in human form. Witnesses, spies, any number of inconvenient people, disappeared into Karlev’s system to suit Stryker’s system of information and kickbacks on Capitol Hill. It’s— well, it’s probably the worst case of corruption I’ve ever seen.”

“And it’s comfortably run by a respected member of the U.S. military,” Erik finishes. “ _Lovely._ ”

“Did Frost know, you think?” Darwin asks. “About Stryker, when she sent you after Karlev?”

“Probably suspected someone on the inside, but not enough to name names,” Charles says. “You start pointing fingers at someone like Stryker, and you’d better have a metric ton of evidence on your side if you don’t want to lose your reputation and your job and probably everything else you value.” He tilts his head in distaste. “Emma Frost might be a dangerous woman, but if she’s up for taking on Stryker as well as Karlev, she’ll be on the side of the angels this time.”

“So how do we take them out?” Darwin asks. “Both of them, Karlev and Stryker.”

“With surgical precision,” Charles says, at the same time that Erik says, “With impunity.”

They regard each other.

“Not mutually exclusive ideas, for once,” Charles says, with a hint of a smile. “I think we might be making progress.”

***

They follow through with their bid for Karlev’s resources with one ear to the ground, waiting for Stryker to give some sort of sign that he’s tracked them down. It stays quiet, at first. Pet bankers one-through-three play their parts very well.

The Swiss account Emma had set up for them slowly grows fat with ill-gotten gains, every deposit traceable, damning, and as secure as, well, a Swiss bank account.

Karlev gets crueler, sharpening under the weight of his growing anxiety, and it breeds dissent among his ranks. Through careful deployment of Raven (at her insistence)  in various guises, and any number of small visitations by delivery men, gas inspectors, and the like, Charles orchestrates surveillance on his every move, waiting and hoping for the moment he breaks rank and bolts.

Karlev does them one better— he goes to Stryker.

***

Charles is drinking coffee in his apartment when Erik picks the lock on his door. Charles doesn’t draw his gun only because Erik’s method of lockpicking is so distinct and the sound of it so familiar that Charles’ first reaction is instead to get up to fetch a second mug.

“Good morning to you, too,” he says, when he hears the door open and shut. “You’re up awfully early.”

“You’re going to want to hear this,” Erik says, and when Charles turns around, he’s holding a CD.

“This was from just past midnight last night,” he continues, when they’ve migrated over to Charles’s laptop (Erik having retrieved his requisite coffee on the way). He hits play.

Stryker sounds like he’s been woken from sleep. “ _This had better be an emergency.”_

_“You’re fucking right it’s an emergency, the Bremine account is gone, fucking—”_

_“Shut your mouth. You don’t say that name aloud, you don’t think it. This line is secure, but only up to a point. What do you mean, it’s gone?”_

_“I mean it’s drained, someone’s diverted it before we got a chance to clean it.”_

_“Someone. You mean Xavier.”_

_“I don’t know! He hasn’t been anywhere near us in months, but I don’t care who it is at this point, as long as they pay. This arrangement is only good for me if it’s worth it, Stryker, so you’d best take care of it.”_

_“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do, you don’t get to dictate_ shit _after what I’ve done for you, how safe I’ve kept you.”_

Karlev hisses through his teeth down the line, but doesn’t protest. It’s the only time Charles has ever heard him back down from anyone.  

Stryker lets out a breath. _“It’s Xavier, there’s no other explanation, we’ve kept our affairs airtight in every other respect. I will take care of this. But you never call me on this line again, you understand me? Our arrangement stands, but on my terms.”_

_“Take care of it. Make it hurt.”_

_“Don’t you worry about that.”_

Charles lets out a breath. “Well,” he says lightly. “I’d say we’ve kicked the hornet’s nest quite well enough.”

“He’s going to kill you, Charles,” Erik says, somber for once, something tight in his expression.

“He’ll try, certainly.”

“Charles. He could kill you and get away with it, no questions asked.”

“I barely exist anymore, any number of people could accomplish that.”

_“Charles.”_

Charles smiles slightly, and touches his arm, because he can’t quite resist doing so. Erik doesn’t pull away from him either, which seems significant.

“I’ll be careful. Don’t you worry.”

***

Charles really is careful. He pays Mickey to make himself scarce and then takes over his apartment, setting up surveillance on his own place. He keeps himself out of the way while Karlev continues to panic over his rapidly dwindling resources, and the rapidly declining faith his men have in him.

Stryker, however, remains damnably discreet, answering or making no further late night phone calls, taking no further dubiously-legal actions. Charles had forwarded a copy of Erik’s tape to Emma, but for several days, there’s no response.

He waits, he listens, he tells Hank and Alex, Erik and Raven and Darwin, to stay out of sight and out of mind. They do, so far as he’s aware— they make minimal contact with each other, phone calls every day that never last longer than thirty seconds. They all keep to themselves, and keep safe.

A week later, Emma calls.

“Yes?” Charles answers, deep in the bowels of an ancient scientific journal he was now reading for the eighth time. He is good at waiting, but he can’t say he enjoys it.

“Have you spoken to Lehnsherr recently?”

“I...yesterday?”

“Did he tell you anything about today?”

Charles feels his heart rate accelerate. “No...why?”

“...That moron.”

Charles drops the journal on the floor. “What’s he done?”

Emma sighs. “We need to meet. There’s something you need to see.”

***

Emma arranges a lunch at a private dining room that even Charles, for all his tricks and former privilege, has never heard of. “It’s fairly new,” she says, already perusing the menu when he arrives. “The younger bankers need a place to chat too, you know.”

“I’m sure,” Charles says, in vague distaste. The decor is sterile, much like the rest of gentrified TriBeCa.

“Such a snob,” Emma says. “Now take a look at these.”

She tosses several photographs in his general direction. He gathers them up off of the eggshell-white tablecloth.

Charles glances over them and could swear that his vision goes white for an excruciating moment.

“When…”

“This morning. At first, I thought he was still carrying out one of your schemes.”

“No,” Charles says. “No, I didn’t know about...I thought...”

“You thought Stryker would come after you,” Emma says. “And he has. He’s found a chink in your armor, and its name is Erik Lehnsherr.”

“Erik won’t. He would never.”

“No,” Emma agrees. “Though I admit I’m surprised that you of all people have dismissed the possibility of betrayal out of hand. Particularly considering your...history, with Lehnsherr.”

“That was an accident,” Charles snaps. “He wasn’t aiming at me. And this...they’ve got something on him, they must have.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Emma scoffs. “What _haven’t_ any of us got on Erik Lehnsherr? He’s armed revolutionaries from Kabul to Johannesburg, Charles, _really_.”

Charles glowered. “Have you come here to taunt me or help me, Ms. Frost?”

She softened, though only slightly. “Help, of course. Karlev has been my central target for years now, but you’ve put something even better in my lap. I’m hardly going to turn my nose up at that.”

“Something better— all right, that’s...don’t lie to me this time,” Charles growls. “You said you worked for Interpol. Interpol doesn’t go after American generals, this should have moved out of your jurisdiction long ago.”

“I have worked for Interpol,” Emma responds. “In the past. I’ve done work for them, work for the CIA, for any number of intelligence and police agencies. I never lied, not really.”

“What do you _do_?”

“I clean house,” Emma says, with a thin smile. “By any means necessary. Off the books, out of sight. Where there are problems, I eliminate them. Shaw was a problem for a lot of people. Karlev has been a persistent problem, too— one whose longevity we didn’t understand. Until you came around, Charles, making something out of your burn notice, making waves where there shouldn’t have been any. The waves you made bounced back off of an unexpected rock in the proverbial pond, one William Stryker. You’ve rooted out the source of your problem and mine. And now it’s time to finish the job.”

“And if he’s your rotten egg, why don’t you get him yourself?” Charles asks, his jaw tight.

“Oh, honey,” Emma says. “That’s not how this works.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“Because I’m the one who has to stay off the record, not you. Now, what are you going to do about this?”

Charles exhales in a rush. “Tell Erik to get out of the damn way and let me deal with this.”

“Might be too late for that. Looks like negotiations are well under way.”

“Then they’re going no further. Christ, Frost, what do you want me to do, let him continue?”

“It may be the best course of action,” Emma says, with a small, elegant shrug.

“He’s going to get himself _killed_.” Charles slammed a hand on the counter.

Emma doesn’t even flinch. “Then I suggest you act before his sacrifice is in vain.”

She leaves the table, a one-hundred dollar bill under her wine glass, before Charles can reach over and throttle her.

He is still for a second, and then stuffs the photograph in his jacket pocket before bolting for the door, sketching apologies to the maitre’d on the way.

He pushes the image out his mind, or tries to. Of Erik staring out from the photograph, his gaze slightly leeward, towards the approaching bulk of William Stryker, whose hand, broad and blunt, is extended for a chilly handshake.

***

Charles doesn’t have to go far to find Erik. Just to his most recent apartment, one Charles is reasonably sure won’t be on Stryker’s radar: a closet-sized studio in East Harlem that has been recently renovated and therefore is entirely sterile, which is exactly how Erik likes his various abodes.

He raps on the door and hears Erik click the safety off of a gun, take the two requisite steps to cross from his bed to the entrance, and say, “Who is it?”

“We need to talk,” Charles says.

“Ah.” The slide of a chain followed by the snick of two deadbolts, and the door opens.

“Emma telling tales out of school?” Erik inquires, safety back on his gun.

“I’d hardly call it that,” Charles snaps, striding inside. “More like a courtesy call, really.”

He can feel Erik flinch behind him. He waits until Erik closes the door behind him, adrenaline and fear and anger ramping inside him, before he turns back to face Erik.

“You’re being a bit overdramatic—” Erik starts.

Charles slams Erik against the door and then pins him there.

Erik barely fights back; he doesn’t seem to even want to.

“That was not your call to make, seeing him,” Charles hisses. “Stryker could have black-bagged you and I wouldn’t have known for _hours,_ what were you thinking, going off on your own like that?”

“That I’m valuable,” Erik says evenly, though his pulse is fast, twitching under his jaw. “That Stryker wants you more than he wants me, and that makes me useful, at least for a time.”

“At what goddamn cost?” Charles demands. Erik is silent. He’s breathing evenly, but Charles can feel tremors in the muscles of his torso. He glares at him. _“Erik.”_

“We were waiting for him to make a move. And in the end, he made one. He just asked for me, not you.”

Charles closes his eyes. “Fucking hell, Erik.”

“You’d have done the same for me.”

“Oh, you’re growing a conscience now?”

“Fuck you, Charles,” Erik spits, leaning forward, but Charles just slams him back into the door.

“You’re not part of the system,” Charles breathes. “You never wanted to be, and as much as it would have once made my life easier, nothing, _nothing_ should be able to make you. Dealing with Stryker will tie you into it and worse. Don’t do it, not for my sake.”

Erik’s eyes are wide with surprise; Charles suspects he had been anticipating Charles’s anger, but not necessarily that reason.

It prompts him to go on. “I believe in the system. I can bear the traps it sets for me. You don’t have to, you shouldn’t have to.”

Erik is shaking his head above him, in disbelief or something else. “But I will,” he says. “I will for you.”

“Fuck.” The fight drains from him, leaving him exhausted. “ _Fuck_. Erik, my darling—”

“I always liked when you called me that.”

Charles rests his head against Erik’s collarbone. “Erik.”

He listens to Erik breathe, in deep, strong gusts. Then he feels Erik’s chin dip down, brushing his hair.

“I have to admit, I’m a bit surprised. All this _Sturm und Drang_ over my having a coffee with an evil mastermind, _honestly,_ Charles. You’ve gone thoroughly soft.”

Maybe he has. Maybe he’s changed. It’s not as disturbing as it should be.

“Don’t you get it, Charles?” Erik says, a little wondering. “You’re my cause now.”

“I’m not a cause, I’m an ex-spy with nothing but my name.”

“You’re _my_ ex-spy, and you have far more than a name. You’re helping people. You’re giving people justice.” Charles feels Erik’s hands settle on his hips and his heartbeat goes all out of rhythm. Erik sighs. “That’s all I ever wanted to do. And now that Shaw’s dead…I can choose you.”

Charles shakes his head ruefully against Erik’s chest. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

“You really don’t,” Erik agrees. “But you can start by letting me run this. I know you’ve been having control issues since this burn notice business, but it’s time, perhaps, to consider alternatives.”

Charles bristles slightly. “I don’t have control issues.”

“You expect calls from all of us every day. While we’re supposed to be _laying low._ ”

“...yes, well.”

“Charles,” Erik says gently. “We’re on my side of the fence now. And Stryker saw me as the way to you. Do you want to know what we talked about?”

Charles takes a deep breath. “What did you talk about?”

“Finally, a good question.” Erik says, his thumbs moving distractingly against the grain of Charles’s shirt. “He said I could either kill you or he’d get one of his own do the job far more slowly and painfully, while I rot in the trendiest prison he could find. Sierra Leone came up, I think.”

“Well, you’re still here,” Charles says, a little unsteadily. “So I’m your contract now?”

“Oh yes,” Erik replies. “But I had my own terms and conditions.”

“And what were those?”

“A twenty-four hour window to provide proof that the job’s been done, and one secure, untapped phone call.”

“Oooh,” Charles says into his Erik’s collar. “A phone call.”

“Secure but not actually untapped of course,” Erik says. “But we can take care of that, can’t we?”

“Oh sure. No problem dodging the attention of a man with might of the entire military and probably the NSA behind him.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I’m still angry with you.”

Erik hums, the vibration in his chest going an embarrassingly long way towards soothing Charles’ frayed nerves. “Of course you are. How about I promise not to go behind your back like that again if we’re not dead by tomorrow?”

“Reasonable enough, I suppose.” Charles sighs. It feels like something has shifted in his chest suddenly, like he’s aligned himself differently, and that he’s happier for it. “You couldn’t have asked for forty-eight? A day isn’t very long to fake one’s death and frame a general for it.”

“You say frame, like that’s all it will take to put him down for life. I thought I was in charge for this one.”

Charles tips his head up to look at him. “You’re really going to?”

Erik smiles. “Really. You’ve given me a place here, Charles. A home. Time for me to return the favor.”

***

They call the team together in unused territory, which mean breaking open the one safehouse Charles had maintained but hadn’t touched since his very first CIA outing.

“I filled out all the paperwork stating that it had been sold off, as was policy, but in fact, I just bought it off the Agency via several shell corporations,” he explains briefly, as they file in. “It was just after the housing crisis— best time to get New York real estate.”

“And it’s not on file anymore?” Erik asks, looking around. “You’re sure?”

“I may have edited all of the related material a few years later,” Charles admits. “I was just about to go to Jo-burg, and it seemed...safer.”

“Appearing less and less of a company man, Charles,” Erik murmurs. “Shocking.”

“Oh, hush. Is that everyone?”

“Unless you’re expecting guests, yes,” Alex says, folding his arms. “You gonna tell us what the hell’s going on?”

“All will be revealed,” Charles agreed. “Very quickly, actually, because we don’t have much time, so I’m going to have to request that we keep the _what the hell_ s to a minimum.”

Erik outlines the situation and the plan, which immediately gets shredded and examined at all angles by the peanut gallery, which is frustrating but also why Charles wanted them all there in the first place, because it means that by the time they settle on a real course of action, it’s going to be solid.

“Holy shit, this might actually work,” Raven says, afterwards.

“‘Might’ being the operative word,” Darwin says dryly. “With the alternative being probably death or prison.”

“Or prison followed shortly by death, the likeliest of all possible scenarios,” Hank says.

Alex rolls his eyes. “Pessimist,” he says.

“Realist,” Charles corrects. “Which leaves me only to ask if anyone is having second thoughts? You can walk away at this point, no hard feelings, I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Raven says. “Obviously we’re all in.”

“When else am I going have a chance to take down the establishment so dramatically?” Erik points out. “Really, Charles, you underestimate us all.” He pauses, regarding Charles carefully, and then says, "If anyone should be questioning the plan, it's you. You're the one who'll sacrifice the most."

Charles breathes out. He knows full well what Erik means. But it's a good plan. And he's been rethinking...a lot of things, lately. “Never mind that,” he says eventually. “Well, then I suppose we’d best get started.”

***

According to official accounts (even before heavy redaction when the CIA steps in), Charles Xavier dies the next day. Cut down in a mugging gone wrong, down an alley in the meatpacking district, in broad daylight. The video evidence, plus the coroner’s report, plus the eye-witnesses, really sells it.

Never mind that there was a very slight issue with the CCTV camera that catches the mugging—it was nearly two hours before the event happened, and almost not worth noting at all. ("Man, I make a _great_  you," Raven will say much later. "Please stop using your powers for evil," Charles will beg.) Never mind also that certain key witnesses are named Marlene, Mickey, and Gerald. They’re all very earnest, and from totally different walks of life— there’s no possible way for their stories to match up so perfectly if it isn’t the truth.

The police are satisfied. The CIA is satisfied.

Erik meets Stryker in a cafe the following day.

“Not so loyal in the end, eh?” Stryker says, self-satisfied as he reads through the police report. “Always knew you were a smart one, Lehnsherr. I meant to tell you before, your work in Kabul was exemplary, I almost considered asking Markus to put you on his roster.”

“His company culture isn’t my favorite,” Erik says. “Though I can’t deny its success.”

“Hmm, its _previous_ success,” Stryker says, with some annoyance. “Couldn’t keep his affairs in order when Xavier came knocking, could he? Still, he owes me one more favor now, and with that problem out of the picture, things can resume properly. I don’t suppose I can make you an offer directly? No need to work with people you don’t care for.”

When Erik smiles, he shows all his teeth. “Well, as it happens, Xavier was my main source of funds, for a time. I could use a rebound gig. Get back in the game, as it were.”

“Quite a bleeding heart, was Xavier. Hasn’t rubbed off on you, has it?”

From his viewpoint on the roof of the neighboring brownstone, Charles can almost see Erik refrain from making a very unwise joke.

“Xavier and I have been at odds on that front since the moment I met him,” Erik replies, with his poker face back in place. “I liked him, but his principles were what held him back.”

“Very smart, Lehnsherr. Very smart.”

“I try to be.” Erik leans forward. “Why don’t you tell me what you need, General?”

***

What Stryker needs is a particular terrorist cell neutralized. Apparently they’re getting in the way of shipping routes, never mind the whole terrorism thing. Charles is quite glad Erik won’t have to do something too terribly awful. Erik seems rather glad of it too.

“He’s coddling me,” he says, after picking the lock on the safehouse and letting himself in. “But I can’t say I mind. Doesn’t matter how cautious he is, so long as he pays me.”

“Where are you off to, then?” Charles asks, offering him a beer.

“The Baltics. Shouldn’t take more than a few weeks, if I have Alex and Darwin with me.” Erik tips back the bottle to take a long draught. Charles watches his throat work.

“I do wish I could go with you.”

“Yes, but that would rather undo the point of this whole exercise.”

“I know, I know.”

Erik watches him for a moment. “Raven will come and visit you while I’m away. She’s sick of acting distraught and confused every time people come to her door, and she can disguise herself well enough now to probably not be tracked here.”

“She had better, or I’ll be bored out of my mind.”

“It’ll be over soon enough. And then we’ll see Stryker fall.”

Charles nods. He can’t help but disbelieve it, just a little. He’s been a burned agent, _persona non grata_ , for nearly a year now. To imagine an after seems much harder now than it had in the beginning. He had been so sure, for a while, before Emma (and after, even) that once he found out the reason behind his burn notice, he could make a case to be reinstated.

Now he’s legally dead to anyone who would even consider reinstating him, and he’s...not as bothered as he expected.

It has a lot, he knows, to do with the man drinking his beer in his safehouse.

“I’d say thank you,” he says, after a long moment, “For doing this for me, but I think you’d probably be inclined to do it anyway.”

“That’s true,” Erik allows. He steps forward into Charles’s space, reaching around him to put his beer down and then trapping him against the counter. “But I’m also doing it for you.”

“You leave tomorrow?” Charles asks, reaching out to rub nonexistent dust from Erik’s lapel.

“Flight leaves at noon.”

“Darling,” Charles says, mostly just to watch Erik’s pupils dilate, “Stay here tonight.”

“Please,” Erik says.

***

Erik leaves Charles’s bed at six the next morning, but not without saying goodbye, which is a first for them.

Three weeks later, there is a gas explosion at a warehouse in the outer limits of Riga. There are, Charles is pleased to hear, no civilian casualties.

He gets an untraceable call about two hours after it hits the news.

“The money went through,” Alex says. “Give ‘em hell, Xavier.”

Charles hangs up, and calls Emma.

“Charles,” she purrs. “Is that a present I see lurking in that Swiss bank account?”

“Happy Christmas, Ms. Frost,” Charles says. “I hope this concludes our business.”

“For now,” Emma says.

***

_“Three-star General William Stryker was arrested today on multiple and extensive charges of corruption heavily involving his roles in military operations and diplomatic ties with the international community. Financial links have been allegedly made between him and known trafficker Markus Karlev, who has also been brought in for questioning by Interpol. More at eleven…”_

***

Three days later, Moira calls him.

“How the hell did you know about Karlev and Stryker?” she demands as soon as he picks up. “And don’t lie to me, Xavier, you’re the only one who could have orchestrated this, considering you’re the only alive dead person in any position to find Stryker’s weak spots.”

Charles wipes sleep out of his eyes and rolls away from Erik’s surprisingly octopus-like grip on his midsection. The sheets come with him, which makes Erik rumble and shift, though not wake, behind him. He says, after a pause, “I, well— wait, how did _you_ know about them? How do you know I’m _not_ dead?”

“Pfft, Raven told me ages ago, we’ve been friends ever since you started gallivanting around with the CIA,” Moira says, “Now answer the question!”

The idea that Raven and Moira have been friends and probably have discussed him extensively behind his back goes a long way towards explaining Raven’s general willingness to throw herself into the fray without training, and also a lot of Moira’s judgmental looks over the years. He tries to organize his thoughts.

“It’s a long and odd story, involving someone who would probably kill me if I ever threw her name about,” he says finally. “But in short, Stryker was the reason behind a lot of trouble that my work happened to intersect with. Taking him out of the picture will solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, so.”

Moira snorted. “I’ll say. But it’s going to cause a headache for internal affairs. Word on the street is he wasn’t working alone, and not just Karlev. The CIA, and a whole lot of others, have their work cut out for them. But in any case, I guess I should thank you.”

“That was the favor?”

“That was the favor.”

“Some favor.”

“Well,” Moira says, a bit more cheerfully, “Maybe I’ll owe you one this time. You know, next time you need it for one of your projects.”

“I wasn’t going to--” Then Charles stops himself. That was no longer true. He couldn't go back to the fold now, it was true, but he could get back into the system, one way or another. Take another name, move abroad— he won’t be dogged by anyone anymore.

He doesn’t want to. He trusts the system, but he doesn’t trust the people inside it. He wants to fix it, but not from the inside out.

“Erik’s broken me,” he breathes.

“I don’t want to know about it,” Moira says, and hangs up.

“I should hope I’ve broken you after last night,” Erik says from behind him, looping his arm back around Charles’s middle and dragging him towards the center of the bed. “But if I haven’t yet, I can damn well try.”

“I do so appreciate your dedication and determination,” Charles says, and turns over to meet him. Butterflies and hurricanes can wait.

***

Two hours later, Darwin calls.

"We've got a situation," he says. "How do you feel about protection rackets run by shady non-profits?"

"I feel," Charles says, with Erik wrapped around him still, "Like they should be taught a lesson."


End file.
